oh i'm john berman in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture did you notice what was missing from this year's presidential debates there was no real talk about climate change or fair taxation throughout our nation's endless wars we get the real dog on those issues and more tonight from ralph nader also the wealthy elite of wall street have crashed our economy devastated the middle class and created unprecedented levels of inequality how and why that america become so subservient to our nation's billionaires also later in the show we'll have your take my take a live segment your chance to call in live and ask a question or make a comment on the air so stay tuned to find out when to call in for your trials the

other big picture. you need to know this you wonder how a man who's been lying to the american people for over a year arguably over eight years has offshore bank accounts pays a lower tax rate on his hundreds of millions of dollars than most working americans how this guy is somehow neck and neck in the polls to be present the united states want to answer a lot of corporate money tragically thanks to all that money neither barack obama or mitt romney are talking about the issues that really affect all of us the most and about the solutions that can save this nation but my next guest has devoted literally devoted his life to talking about these issues and to not just talking about creating solutions to these problems ralph nader joins me now consumer advocate author five time presidential candidate whose latest book is titled the seventeen solutions new ideas for our american future ralph nader welcome back it's

always an honor to have you on so thank you thank you so much i'd like to actually just go through the book you got you know they did this. is a very straightforward seventeen policy suggestion let's start out with fundamental tax reform it's very simple one is you tax all income alike so you don't have lower taxes for the income the wealthy get by and large like capital gains and dividends that was of reagan had he tax them all alike so one year i thought he had one year . the other thing is why don't we have a principle that says let's first tax what we like the least or dislike the most as a society before we tax labor ok so we should tax speculation wall street speculation tax hundreds of billions of dollars of comit we should tax corporate crime we want less of that we should tax pollution a carbon tax is been proposed so what we should do first is tax the type of activities that we want to diminish before we tax what we want more of which is labor and i don't you know in fact i think that one of the one of the pieces of the

whole understanding of taxation that has been so lost in the last thirty years is that taxes do actually two things one they raise revenue for the government but two they encourage or discourage behavior based on the will of the people which is what you're talking about and we have perverse incentives so people like romney they want all the services in new usa but they go into these tax haven islands overseas like you know bahamas and so forth to pay for is zero taxes and even here it pays fifteen percent that's a capital gain and that's what he says you make a statement deed he hasn't released his tax returns for fourteen years the way his father did when he ran for does we don't know that chapter number to make our communities more self-reliant how do we do ok that's already in place it just got to be more widespread every time we patronize a credit union or community bank we weaken the bank of america and citi group the giant banks every time we go to farmer's market we weaken the agribusiness corporations every time we have

a community health clinic with emphasis on prevention nutrition exercise participatory sports we're undermining the drug company says. and the hospital chains every time we develop renewable energy which is now local can being a wind power etc we're undermining the sales of exxon in peabody coal what's not to like when you have community economies no financier in london tokyo or new york can pull the rug out from under a whole community hollowed out and ship the jobs to fascists in communist regimes overseas who know how to put their workers in their place yeah indeed and in fact wouldn't to another piece of that be to put the solar panels on everybody's rough lead and that's part of local generation exactly where the consumer begins producing again right your third chapter is give science and technology back to the people well when did the people on it when was it taken from the people i remember jeff jefferson as a matter of principle refused to patent any of his invent yes ben franklin was very

reluctant to do that if this is this was an ideal of the founders they resurrected exactly right now we are the cream of the crop in science and technology is too often working on weapons of mass destruction and i mean you know they can hit a target five thousand miles away they can have a miniature drone that kind of tell it back to the people brilliant modern public transit renewable solar energy wind power the kind of products that will produce cheaper housing more durable products better agriculture how do we incentivize it through tax code or changes in government spending paul you know one is for example to deflate the military industrial complex which consumes half of the federal government's operating expenditures we have no more major enemy have some gangs we don't have the soviet union anymore but we still have an eight hundred billion dollar budget and two criminal wars operating in asia the second is as citizen

scientists which the book talks about more and more people are signing up to be volunteers citizen scientists so they can. for example spot the number of seals coming into a bay or where that certain species are coming back and they're working in canada in us for official agencies now the more citizen scientists you have the more you get high school labs physics chemistry labs to test heavy metals and drinking water and release it to the community to test soil samples to test food for contaminants right out of the high school labs you're creating science for the people when these people become adults and we might actually discover you know the radiation for focus shaman where it's on yeah ok number chapter number four protect the family unit this is something the republicans love to talk about yeah and this is where convergence between conservatives and liberals come in there is a massive huge marketing effort day by day by corporations bypassing in undermining family and parental authority and marking directly kids three year olds four seven

eight nine what do they market junk food junk drink skyrocket obesity diabetes in market violent programming even make it interactive in other words they're putting in these kids' heads the worst kind of information material undermining parental authority right now you see you can get a great political movement behind because is there a parent today this isn't harassed by corporation it produced ads designed to get the kid to nag the parent and buy the product absolutely right we're talking with ralph nader's new book the seventeen solutions and we're not going to be in the seven eight minutes we have left we're going to get through all seventeen but i want to get through as many as i can because this is really good stuff get corporations off welfare chapter five ok they get subsidies handouts giveaways bailouts again huge opinion against this conservatives call it crony capitalism liberals call it corporate welfare i call it the corporate government taxpayers'

money siphoned to the goldman sachs and the big banks and insurance companies. a.i.g. this is outrageous so you know let's get rid of that and put that money back into building public works all over the country good paying jobs that can't be sent to china you know modernizing schools clinics public transit systems public buildings sewage drinking water systems it's so obvious is now it's all obvious but it's not happening because there's too much power into few hands who use it against the many and that's what and too much money into few hands who are using that which is power chapter six which i think gets to this crackdown on corporate crime that's simple law enforcement and the budgets are the credibly small if you had a massive street crime wave in new york and you only had one hundred cops what would be the obvious next step you hire more cops so we need more federal cops on the corporate crime beat but the corporations in congress make sure that the law

enforcement budgets the prosecutors the investigators and the justice department f.b.i. f.d.a. are de minimus and that's the way to get rid get in get away with the corporate crime it's amazing how times change how reagan at least sent a thousand banks just to jail with the crisis we haven't seen one now that's yet. to create national charters for a large corporation well i goes back to president william howard taft and president teddy roosevelt they saw these big corporations coming up and they said look we can have nevada a you can have new jersey and delaware charter i mean general motors is charter to this day in delaware general motors could buy delaware in a weekend of dupont was willing to settle or ok so this is just taking some one hundred years ago was a hot issue didn't get through congress and say look we got to rewrite the compact between these giant corporations strip them of constitutional personhood and put the people in charge and others subordinate the sovereignty of corporations to the

sovereignty of we the people which is by the way there isn't a single word corporation or company. in our constitution absolutely are they ruling as they are right which brings us to we the people chapter eight in your new book ralph nader restore our civil liberties yes well this is a huge violation people are being arrested without charges massive surveillance it's illegal without judicial approval under both bush and and obama we're seeing drones killing people on suspicion all over the world where the president makes the decisions every tuesday it's called terror tuesday makes a decision with his advisors he decides who lives and who dies he becomes the prosecutor judge jury executioner and cover up or is there anything more unconstitutional the net i can i can think of very many number nine use government procurement to spur innovation and we did this with with nasa i mean this goes back to jack kennedy my government is the biggest consumer they buy everything we buy

they buy food clothing motor vehicles energy construction materials so why don't they say ok customer is always right we want cleaner materials more durable materials more safe products because ariel's made the us yeah yes right and then you see that will build the civilian economy now this isn't just theoretical that's how i got seat belts in cars i got the government to first say for government cars you know for our employees we want seatbelts back in one nine hundred sixty and we did it again in the mid eighty's under reagan where the head of the general services administration who was an auto parts dealer from new hampshire so he was not in awe of the auto companies he said i want to buy five thousand cars for government please with their bit and ford bid and that was the beginning of the airbag installation prose but you have had such an impact on this country i it blows my mind ok reinvest in public works chapter number ten very simple the best

jobs program other than increasing the minimum wage which is spent right away near thirty million workers who make less today and inflation adjusted. wages the new workers nine hundred sixty eight one worker productivity was half of what it is today and neither obama of course romney they won't even champion thirty million workers a good political issue it will stimulate spending but the other great jobs program is repairing america we all know that franklin delano roosevelt did it it's jobs that are in every community they make life better they rebuild in modernize our public facilities from public transit to clinics schools sewage drinking water systems almost things we see crumbling i always bridges what eisenhower republican did it just like a democrat you can pay for by raising the corporate taxes to what they were in the prosperous sixty's ok getting rid of the hundreds of billion dollars of corporate subsidies and corporate welfare and cracking down on corporate crime and fine you know and putting it back into the community really ralph nader it's

a seventeen solutions we got through ten of them you need to get the book and read it to get all seventeen of them sir thank you and i have it on the program thank you. now up next we'll speak with journalist and author thomas frank after the break. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about what he's sorry are you know what that is my tears. but i don't want to give us a defeat terrorism on the liberal democrats. can you believe that it's. going to hurt you to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sells a sensational stick garbage he calls it breaking news i'm happy martin and we're going to break the bat.

governor romney and i are we both agree we agree we're going to bring the tax rates down i felt the same as the president did governor romney i'm glad. you agree let's come back to something the president i agree on and there to you agree that the voters have a choice perhaps when you wonder who to vote for when romney and obama agree on so many things never you do have other options come november sixth tune in to see the second round of debates between the major third party candidates right here on our t.v. . i will buy all the networks i also promised that i'd fight every single day on bamberg to. find.

my own place. it about the rest of the news one of the primary disagreements between president obama and mitt romney is how much the super rich should pay in taxes president wants to raise taxes on the rich to what they were under bill clinton on the other hand mitt romney wants to cut taxes for the rich by twenty percent putting the bush tax cuts for the rich on steroids this debate has lured many of our nation's plutocrats to come out of their mansions and corporate headquarters to decry what they say is class warfare and their counterparts in the media have conjured up

terms like job krueger's to promote the interests of the wealthy and argue that any new taxes are going to hurt the economy somehow in a nation where nearly fifty million americans are living in poverty the real victims are the one percent those millionaires and billionaires who may be facing a modest tax increase go figure this debate is being played out on a smaller scale in california where democratic governor jerry brown is asking voters to support proposition thirty a ballot initiative that will raise taxes on the rich slightly in order to raise more revenue for the cash strapped state on it's a prop thirty argued that passage will lead to exodus of millionaires from the state and those a collapsing economy but a new study by sociologist at stanford princeton proves that that claim is untrue as c.n. be serial ports the study looked at two tax changes in california one thousand nine hundred tax credit and i income filers in two thousand and five levy called the mental health services tax and took one percent of income over one million using

tax return data the researchers examined out of the changes affected millionaire migration in or out of the state before and after the tax laws were passed the results were pretty straightforward a tax cut for the rich had no effect on more millionaires moving into the state and a madis a modest top tax hike on the rich tax hike had no effect on more millionaires moving out of the state similar study was conducted in new jersey with the same result. just the fact that these studies need to be done shows what a privileged position the wealthy have in our political debate in crafting policy nowadays the interests of the rich are carefully considered which is odd considering that it was the rich particular the rich on wall street who were responsible for crashing our economy just a few years back and push for policies that have devastated the middle class and created levels of wealth inequality never before seen in the united states so how have the rich managed to pull this off here for an answer to that is thomas frank author journalist and columnist for harper's magazine whose latest book is pity the billionaire hard times swindle on the unlikely comeback of the right.

now on paper bags there you go on to say that time indeed so let's talk about this pity the billionaire how did we ever how do we get to this place where we're where america is sitting around worrying about job creators we're out of there you know look when i wrote the book. i thought the title was supposed to be a bit of black humor sarcasm i had no idea that it would things would unfold the way they have over the course of the last year to the victim you know when you have these billionaires writing there's a whole genre of this now billionaires writing open letters to president obama billionaires denouncing president obama because he's so mean to them you know he says it's always about the things that president obama says right he's his rhetoric is so harsh you know he says he's too cruel when he calls them fat cats and dogs about their private jets and stuff like that but leave aside the fact that they're

doing better than they've basically ever done in their entire lives and they just got bailed out in this sort of staggering way i mean it's a sort of colossal in gratitude but it's also a kind of i mean how would you put it it's a psychological thing it's self-delusion on a on a on a scale it's like it's like lose the sixteenth or something like this you know it's a kind of versailles kind of phenomenon and i think it was. it is basically is you know you look at that look at the phenomenon as a whole ok you've got these people who believe in this is this is from the party movement to the sort of mainstream of the republican party now they are society's producers you know it's not it's not the takers yeah that's right as you know there's a high class would say if iran actually is all is i wouldn't say she's the source for a lot of this but she brought it all together into one really ugly package you know in that book atlas shrugged i know it at all ryan makes all the staffers read it now he's running for vice president like make my head explode. it's like it's like

these people crashed the global economy good four years later they're not only back but they're they've gone further than ever before and they're demanding more deregulation of it you know more of you know we want to get to that sort of pure utopian capitalist state and they're really talking about this sort of thing and it is extraordinary but if you go back and look at this ideology these people imagine that it's not workers who built america right it's not the blue collar class it's it's them it's the you know it's the people at the top that's the real producers in society and at the same time they are you know everybody calls them names and slaps taxes on them and you we have this progressive tax code even if it has been watered down over the years and so it's it's very comforting i think to think of yourself both as the hardest working member of society the one who makes all the jobs and creates everything and also as societies greatest victim and by the way i am quoting iran their societies greatest victims one tycoon says to another in atlas

shrugged it's that's what the book is a bad news coming to these people work so hard and yet society is so cruel to them some seem to them to you know to a large extent this mindset which has even infiltrated the tea party you know to the extent that there is such a thing but i mean you know you've got average people showing up and saying you know yeah you know do too many government read. as in too much taxes and they've never been regulated their lives and or or actually they haven't it's what's kept them from dying from contaminated food but in any case you know they're saying these things and talking about you know smaller government all this stuff do you think the hurricane sandy might be a wake up call that this moment that we've had here recently where where you've got chris christie and barack obama you know political enemies walking virtually hand in hand because all of a sudden people are realizing that there are things that the government only can do

. you know i if if the the the crash of two thousand and eight didn't teach him that i don't know how hurricane sandy is going to teach him you know seriousness if you're that cynical when i look at you i just i don't want to grasp at straws right before an election this is this is a lesson that has been driven home in the course of let's just say in the course of the bush administration time and time and time and time again and yet we have and we have a party that in this country that's supposed to stand up for government and tell us why we need a good honest functioning government and they will do it ok there's a there's a this is one of the reasons why god is doing it for us. because one of the reasons why i like barack obama back in two thousand is i actually thought he would go out there and deliver that message and you know tell us why we need a strong regulatory state yet the perfect example right in front of you know the collapse of wall street you know after this industry being completely deregulated

all the sort of things you know the kind of nonsense they were doing and yet he came he became president in the midst of this citizens united air i mean you know this so this is it happened a couple years down the road but but here it is and how can anybody be anything other than you know the bird in the gilded cage i mean is he is he not trapped or any president trapped by that or do you still he be the last president elect. that on the preset is the united system and but he but i mean let's not let's not forget he also was one of the was the first one to toss aside the campaign for public financing rules and to cynically in dollars and cents same to some of those nixon era when the senator has reinvented and and he you know but i do think that in the future things are going to change. in a dramatic way and what i mean by that is that the kind of money that's going to be spent on politics is going to be so vast ok it's essentially unlimited there's sky's the limit there's no upper boundary on this ok and so the prices are just

going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and the fundraising demands are going to get greater and greater and greater and what this will effectively mean is that you know it doesn't matter really if the president is a is a democrat or republican they'll have to be a friend of the billionaire class because that's where the that's where you raise the money for this is i'm talking about him in the future here but we can already see this unfolding oh sure today clearly of the republican side and arguably on the democratic side as well in the one nine hundred twenty s. parting came into an office in the election one hundred twenty his campaign slogan was less government in business more business yes you remember that it was one of the it was a what titles are you draw here you exactly you taught me that and and it seems like that's the republican mantra today harding did that it kicked off eight years of bubble economy and then a giant crash. we thought the two thousand and eight was the giant crash is that crash still coming is that what it's going to take to wake us up and bring it bring

about a new f.d.r. and i don't i don't know the thing is that we had the wake up call we look the way i like to put it we came to a turning point in two thousand and eight we just didn't make the turn right you know there is well or more there is no you can't ask for a more perfect example of the you know of the of the emptiness but then exhausting to listen i'll let the steam out of that i mean you know he stopped obama stop the hemorrhaging of the jobs and so you know so that's right. so the real not by the way i thought the stimulus was you know there are a lot of things to be to be thankful to for barack obama to be the really cool you know a lot of good things he did some real good thing while he's out of that was the stimulus and he didn't go far enough with it but it was a really good thing what what really i think ruined his presidency and has the cloud that has hung over it from the very beginning was the bailouts and then he brought in tim geithner architect of the bailout and made his treasury secretary and did everything he could to signal continuity with the bush administration on

what was in point of fact the bush administration's most hated policy the bank bailouts what do you think of the possibilities of this changing going forward absent another great crash well. i'm you know come on tom i'm extremely pessimistic i don't think it's good but i think we had our eye on is it like we had a moment and we missed it or we thought we elected a guy who was i mean i certainly thought that we were electing a man that was going to do that was going to lead the country in a different direction i think i thought that in two thousand and eight while he had a filibuster proof senate for two months and one day he also had this public of this country behind him in a huge way in two thousand and eight and i believe he could have had anything he wanted had he had the you know the audacity to use his word if he had the audacity to ask for it and demand it and explain it to the public in a way that was that was absolutely an mistake of all i mean the look had he changed course on the bailouts had he not just accepted the bush administration policy in the way that franklin roosevelt look they had bailouts in the thirty's. who had to

bail out homes you know it was it was reprehensible the public hated it roosevelt denounced it constantly he didn't say oh is that you act of bipartisanship i'm going to continue it no he changed it dramatically did it in a very good way he came into power when there was three years a great depression not arguably but this this is not i mean obama didn't have to do what he did he could have done it in all sorts of he could have played the situation very differently and the really. ironic thing and this is what he what he was that he thought to be very responsible doing what he did and he was playing by the washington rules bipartisanship consensus grand bargain with the republicans he wanted all those things the republicans wouldn't give it to him they would never heal that inch so he didn't he didn't get that and he also did things that were not very popular he threw out the more popular options like doing the bank bailouts differently in order to to do what he thought were the more responsible things and now look at him look at this election it's what he's going to walk and he followed his heart there had to follow got

a no. other already ahead he followed you know the historical path of his party he would be immensely popular today would be no fifty percent election we have to wrap it up thomas frank his new book is now out now out in paperback but you're a billionaire thank you times anytime tom good to have you with us. governor romney and we both agree we agree we need to bring the tax rates down i felt the same as the president did governor romney i'm glad. you agree let's come back to something the president i agree on and you tube you agree that the voters have a choice abscesses of you wondering who to vote for when romney and obama agree on so many things remember you do have other options come november sixth tuned in to see the second round of debates between the major third party candidates right here on our t.v. . i

will fight all that i also promised that i'd fight every single day on. my own. you know sometimes you see a story. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok. i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.